Mobile messaging will continue to grow

MMS, email and IM will take over from texts

Mobile messaging will continue to be the most popular function on mobile phones for at least four more years, analyst Jupiter Research has predicted.

Despite the growth of content services and other mobile add-ons, over 70 per cent of premium mobile services will come from messaging in 2011.

Jupiter Research also estimates that the European market for content, services and messaging will grow from 21.9 billion euros to 27.7 billion by 2011. The value of mobile content will rise to 7.9 billion euros from 2.2 billion.

Traditional SMS text messaging will decrease in favour of MMS, email, and instant messaging, Jupiter Research predicted in its report .

Jupiter also said that arious 'infotainment' services - such as news and sports clips - will outperform older forms of mobile services such as ringtones.